Maxwell Maltz, M.D. created the Self Improvement phenomenon Psycho-Cybernetics. For many years, he had a practice as a reconstructive and cosmetic facial surgeon, but he moved from treating “outer scars” to “inner scars” after observing that some patients were still unhappy despite their new faces. Some claimed that although their appearance changed, they did not feel any different.

Dr. Maltz tried to find out why this was happening. He discovered that your “outer life” was a reflection of how you saw yourself on the inside, what he called “self-image.” Dr. Maltz noted that you can never rise higher than your self-image. If your “inner self” is not equal to your “outer self,” then you will always revert back to where you think you belong.

After a decade of counseling patients, extensive research, and testing his evolving “success conditioning techniques,” Dr. Maltz published his findings in 1960. The Psycho-Cybernetics book was an instant bestseller and made him one of the most in-demand motivational speakers throughout the 1960s and the early 1970s. Dr. Maltz wrote over a dozen books, applying Psycho-Cybernetics to different purposes, including business success and sex life improvement.

Other Programs & Highlights

The Psycho-Cybernetics Foundation, Inc. is dedicated to creating a new “renaissance” in self-image psychology by making available all of Dr. Maltz’s works. The Foundation also develops new publications featuring contemporary authors, speakers, and leaders in the human potential field.

Favorite Quotes & Thoughts from Maxwell Maltz

• Often the difference between a successful person and a failure is not one has better abilities or ideas, but the courage that one has to bet on one’s ideas, to take a calculated risk—and to act.

• Accept yourself as you are. Otherwise you will never see opportunity. You will not feel free to move toward it; you will feel you are not deserving.

• If you make friends with yourself you will never be alone.

• Realizing that our actions, feelings, and behavior are the result of our own images and beliefs gives us the level that psychology has always needed for changing personality.

• We must have courage to bet on our ideas, to take the calculated risk, and to act. Everyday living requires courage if life is to be effective and bring happiness.

• Close scrutiny will show that most “crisis situations” are opportunities to either advance or stay where you are.

• When you see a thing clearly in your mind, your creative “success mechanism” within you takes over and does the job much better than you could do it by conscious effort or “willpower.”

• Within you right now is the power to do things you never dreamed possible. This power becomes available to you just as you can change your beliefs.

• What is opportunity and when does it knock? It never knocks. You can wait a whole lifetime, listening, hoping, and you will hear no knocking. None at all. You are opportunity, and you must knock on the door leading to your destiny. You prepare yourself to recognize opportunity, to pursue and seize opportunity as you develop the strength of your personality, and build a self-image with which you are able to live—with your self-respect alive and growing.

• Low self-esteem is like driving through life with your hand-break on.

Getting Started With Maxwell Maltz

The best way to get started with Maxwell Maltz is to read the original Psycho-Cybernetics. This book has sold unbelievably well because it provides real value, is very readable, is based on science, and contains a road map to achieve greater success. Dr. Maltz says that your self-image is your key to a better life because of two important discoveries:

• All of your actions, feelings, behaviors, even your abilities are always consistent with your own self-image.

• The self-image can be changed.

In Psycho-Cybernetics, Dr. Maltz teaches you how to change your self-image and achieve that greater success. Some of the areas that he covers in the book include the following:

• Imagination—the first key to your success mechanism.

• Dehypnotize yourself from false beliefs.

• How to utilize the power of rational thinking.

• How to remove emotional scars or how to give yourself an emotional facelift.

• Do-it-yourself tranquilizers that bring peace of mind.

Psycho-Cybernetics provides many practice exercises and specific ideas to improve your life. Even though the book was written in 1960, his assertions, beliefs, and systems still work today.